13 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

It really depends. I have started TES: Arena like 10 times, but never went to far after The Labirinthian dungeon.

Lately, I most often replay some JRPGs and Souls games, as I want to unlock more of the sidequests in NG+ and further.

Have you ever played any Dark Souls game more than once .......Mamie tell the truth

7 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Have you ever played any Dark Souls game more than once .......Mamie tell the truth

Of course.

Demon’s Souls 3x

Dark Souls 4x

Dark Souls II 6x

🤷‍♂️

Saw someone trying a 7 Days run where one can only use items/resources from zombie lootbag drops - zero containers/chests of any kind, no whacking things for wood/ores or any resources etc. 500% loot bag drop rate setting. 50% workstations in the wild (since one probably won't be able to craft any). Can scrap lootbag items for certain resources, that's it. I went "oh, that sounds interesting."

1st try - punch two dozen zombies to death, but in also get hit by them and constantly debuffed into my own death (multiple deaths). Also, no loot bags dropped.
2nd try - punch a dozen zombies to death, a few lootbags, get a stone axe, some cobblestone, perk magazines etc. Whack some more zombies, but die of thirst because I can't build a campfire (no wood) nor do I have a pot (rules are can't pick one up even if one is lying in a house) or make enough coins to buy enough water.
3rd try - similar to the 1st try
4th try - punch half a dozen zombies, a starred/high stat lvl 1 shovel drops! Use that to whack zombies. Lootbags galore! Starred boneknife drops and I can bleed zombies to death! (don't ask). Still playing that attempt. Killing is now easy. But I can't build even a small base, nor repair/alter a POI (I can hide/shelter in POI's tho). I can't even build a door (no wood). Loot bag contents don't work like that. Took forever for enough pistol-parts to drop to craft a pistol. Most fun I've had in a while. I think I like this challenge run.

Edited August 20Aug 20 by LadyCrimson

Almost finished with Turok 2...my GOD was this annoying! Thank goodness the 14 year old me didn't try to finish this game on the N64. Absolute horror!

I am also hitting Cyberpunk DLC soon.

Well, the sort of expected thing happened, I started NG+ in Stellar Blade and kinda lost interest, at least for now, when I got to the second open world area.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2's first major DLC came out and I've been trying to play it, but GOG games on Linux are such a pain in the neck. Heroic Games Launcher just refuses to download the update, and the manual installer just refuses to let me install it. Apparently someone had the "bright" idea to forcibly check the Windows Registry for the install path, and if it can't find the game there it just bails. No option to manually pick a path to install to.

Since this game is stupid large and my internet is stupid slow I imported the game from my Windows install when I finally dumped that for Cachyos. That probably means the registry entries are missing, which I guess explains why both Heroic as well as the manual installer fail.

Downloading the whole 171GB again is going to take like a day (17hours according to Heroic) so I'm pretty peeved off right now. If GOG wants me to buy any more games off of them they're going to have stop relying on Windows specific mechanism for their installers at the very least.

Edited Friday at 04:16 PM5 days by marelooke

On 8/21/2026 at 5:14 PM, marelooke said:

Well, the sort of expected thing happened, I started NG+ in Stellar Blade and kinda lost interest, at least for now, when I got to the second open world area.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2's first major DLC came out and I've been trying to play it, but GOG games on Linux are such a pain in the neck. Heroic Games Launcher just refuses to download the update, and the manual installer just refuses to let me install it. Apparently someone had the "bright" idea to forcibly check the Windows Registry for the install path, and if it can't find the game there it just bails. No option to manually pick a path to install to.

Since this game is stupid large and my internet is stupid slow I imported the game from my Windows install when I finally dumped that for Cachyos. That probably means the registry entries are missing, which I guess explains why both Heroic as well as the manual installer fail.

Downloading the whole 171GB again is going to take like a day (17hours according to Heroic) so I'm pretty peeved off right now. If GOG wants me to buy any more games off of them they're going to have stop relying on Windows specific mechanism for their installers at the very least.

Sorry to hear. This is also the main reason why I do not purchase larger titles on GOG - it can be challenging to install and get them running on other systems, while retrying takes time and bandwidth.

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Regarding replaying, I replay games less often now. Mostly due to the limited time and larger backlog, though there are a few shorter action games I return to (should replay DS2 at some point). I would like to try the different paths in WotR but the time commitment does not encourage me.

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I've purchased 2 Early Access titles this month (and probably will get a third for £8). The experience was not quite as positive as I had hoped - Solasta II has a fantastic character creation system. I spent several hours creating the party and restarted trice (ended up with recreating my party from the first game). The issue is that the game does not run at all on the PC and runs poorly on Deck. So I spent a few more hours trying to get it to run better. The only positive achievements are that I know the developers added -dx12 -sm6 to the launch options on Steam (if anyone has the GOG copy, could you please confirm?) and I have managed to purge the vegetation (to reduce it significantly enough for it to be less visually obtrusive). Otherwise, on my testing point (the spot after the third battle and before the first vista), there was no noticeable gain from anything except dropping the rendering resolution. When I reached the World Map, the FPS dropped to single digits, so it was a hard stop for me.

Still, I am quite happy with the character creator (would be even happier if I knew that I had to assign different family roles to my toons) and the D&D5e implementation (it felt amazing to have the Sneak Attack reactions trigger).

The other one is Expeditions: Samurai. It somewhat reminds of Expeditions: Rome and performs noticeably better than Solasta II (well, it runs on the main PC). The visual style is closer to Kingdoms of Amalur than Rome. The issue with Samurai is that I could not see the interactive items reliably, there is no area maps (it was the same in Rome), and the objectives were not quite clear from the dialogues (I had to check the journal twice after landing to figure out that I had to level up to proceed or that I needed to take the weapons back instead of just waiting), which is a poor combination.

Otherwise, there are some changes to the combat system with different classes using different resources for abilities and the dialogue options affect the standing with the companions quite actively (the bonuses are provided for both loyalty and animosity, interestingly). The character creation is more limited and the list of perks and skills is not provided at the start, but it is functional overall.

The EA game I am looking at is Entropy. In the demo, the combat was the RPGMaker default which annoyed me immensely. The setting and the visual style were appealing enough, though, with the character creation being fairly limited as well (the avatar and the starting stats are chosen during the opening scene).

---

So, playing Mark of the Deep which is a decent isometric action-adventure game about pirates. No performance issues so far.

I finished Alice Madness Returns after about 30 hours, its good fun for all the previous reasons I mentioned. I first played this game about 12-13 years ago and back then I couldn't defeat the end boss. I tried about 10 times and raged quit. But now I won the final battle on my 3rd try. I used a Controller this time so maybe that was the difference?

Anyway this game gets 65\100 on the " BruceVC game rating system " and its recommended

Then I played The Lightkeeper which is a horror adventure game where the protagonist is a WW1 veteran suffering from PTSD because of what he did in the war. He gets tasked to maintain a lighthouse on a deserted island and supernatural events linked to his past start occuring. It has some very scary moments but its very short. 3- 4 hours.

But its fun for a single sitting game

Then I played The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante which is a text based, CYOA where you make dialogue options and advance certain skills that give you further options and success around choices. I spent about 20 hours trying to get the right outcomes which was for me about becoming a noble and keeping my family together. I mostly failed and had to restart the main chapter several times but then at the end I reached the perfect outcome for my family but they all ended up getting killed in the riots at the end of the final chapter

I had enough by then of the repetition so I stopped playing with that ending. This game is an entertaining distraction, nothing fantastic. It gets a 55/100

Weren't you supposed to play SOMA a while back? :p

That was normal Bruce. This is rebel Bruce who doesn't play what he's sposed to.

12 hours ago, majestic said:

Weren't you supposed to play SOMA a while back? :p

I remember talking about this game because I play Frictional games and I enjoy them. I played Amnesia Bunker last

To be honest I forgot about it, I must add it my list

Started playing Turok 3. Man, this not your traditional Turok but oh boy did I enjoy it. A short 3 to 4 hour experience that screams of the late 90s fps games. :p

On 8/25/2026 at 8:37 AM, BruceVC said:

I remember talking about this game because I play Frictional games and I enjoy them. I played Amnesia Bunker last

To be honest I forgot about it, I must add it my list

SOMA is fantastic, enjoy!

---

Right, got some hands-on time with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 DLC and Patch 2.0 now, so here's some initial thoughts.

The Zone itself feels much better, things in general look a lot more realistic and the areas look less samey. The biggest improvement by far is the lighting, you don't need a Flashlight in the weirdest situations anymore. Spawns also seem to be somewhat improved, at least I haven´t had enemies spawn on top of me anymore and the tendency of the game to just drop encounters on you on a timer also seems to have been toned down a little bit (but it is still very much there). They also tweaked some values so radiation started affecting me again, while before the patch I was pretty much immune to all but the "you shall not pass"-instakill radation, so that is nice.

There's some new variants of existing mutants, not really sure what is different aside from their colour. Most of them still have all the problems they had before. Mutant design in general in this instalment is, imho, poor, and the 2.0 patch doesn't appear to have done anything to address this (not that I really expected it to)

The DLC (so far) itself feels a much more coherent story-wise than the base game, so that's a big improvement. It does seem to focus on, or at least heavily involve, the Duty vs Freedom rivalry. I've personally never cared much for the relationships between the various factions, at least not any further than "is hostile/is friendly" and the whole "faction war" shtick from Clear Sky is something I absolutely did not care for at all, but ymmv. At least the people you meet are likeable, and as long as I won't be forced to pick a side it is "whatever" as they say.

The boss fights (or the fact that there are any at all, really) still really suck and I really wish they'd just get rid of them entirely. They are just not fun and horribly immersion breaking.

There's some fun new anomalies in the DLC, but I'm not sure if any of them pop up outside of the new areas, but so far I have not seen them outside of the new areas.

The game is probably close to where it should have been on launch at this point. I would still recommend people new to the series play the originals first though (at least SoC and CoP) because I really think they ruined the impact of mutants in this one. In more general terms I'd say the game now qualifies as "good" in my book, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-enjoyers that have been holding off on getting it may want to consider jumping in at this point.

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by marelooke

1 hour ago, marelooke said:

SOMA is fantastic, enjoy!

---

Right, got some hands-on time with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 DLC and Patch 2.0 now, so here's some initial thoughts.

The Zone itself feels much better, things in general look a lot more realistic and the areas look less samey. The biggest improvement by far is the lighting, you don't need a Flashlight in the weirdest situations anymore. Spawns also seem to be somewhat improved, at least I haven´t had enemies spawn on top of me anymore and the tendency of the game to just drop encounters on you on a timer also seems to have been toned down a little bit (but it is still very much there). They also tweaked some values so radiation started affecting me again, while before the patch I was pretty much immune to all but the "you shall not pass"-instakill radation, so that is nice.

There's some new variants of existing mutants, not really sure what is different aside from their colour. Most of them still have all the problems they had before. Mutant design in general in this instalment is, imho, poor, and the 2.0 patch doesn't appear to have done anything to address this (not that I really expected it to)

The DLC (so far) itself feels a much more coherent story-wise than the base game, so that's a big improvement. It does seem to focus on, or at least heavily involve, the Duty vs Freedom rivalry. I've personally never cared much for the relationships between the various factions, at least not any further than "is hostile/is friendly" and the whole "faction war" shtick from Clear Sky is something I absolutely did not care for at all, but ymmv. At least the people you meet are likeable, and as long as I won't be forced to pick a side it is "whatever" as they say.

The boss fights (or the fact that there are any at all, really) still really suck and I really wish they'd just get rid of them entirely. They are just not fun and horribly immersion breaking.

There's some fun new anomalies in the DLC, but I'm not sure if any of them pop up outside of the new areas, but so far I have not seen them outside of the new areas.

The game is probably close to where it should have been on launch at this point. I would still recommend people new to the series play the originals first though (at least SoC and CoP) because I really think they ruined the impact of mutants in this one. In more general terms I'd say the game now qualifies as "good" in my book, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-enjoyers that have been holding off on getting it may want to consider jumping in at this point.

Excellent news, I have been looking forward to playing STALKER 2 for a while now but I was waiting for it to be more stable

But I will wait a big longer for more official patches

Citadelum is ok in early days, feels a lot like Caesar 4 although the city seems quieter.

I finally finished my first run through Black Geyser. Overall, the game was very good and I enjoyed plaing it very much. It is definitely an old-school cRPG in every way. But, the fact that it was a low-budget crowd-funded game does show. The writing needed more work (not just the quality of the writing but also such things as dialogue branching and reactivity), and the area levels were often too simple, small, and repetitive. The main quest was okay, but I liked many of the side quests more, including especially the companion quests which had multiple parts to them. The companions themselves were a mixed bag; some were really interesting and well-written while others were obviously thrown in at the last minute.

The good news is the that the developers are very good about accepting and listening to player/fan feedback. There were a couple of side quests where bugs were preventing me from completing them. After I used their built-in bug reporting system, they very quickly got back to me with solutions. Then, I used their correspondence with me to send back to them a lot of my constructive feedback about the game, to which they were very enthusiastically receptive. Their devs are even active in posting on the game's Steam forum! So, I have high expectations and a lot of excitement now for their next game, Avaria.

************************

I also finished my most recent attempt at playing Humankind. This time I was able to go all the way into the fourth of the five eras of the game before I finally quit. I play this (and other similar) strategy/4X games as sandbox games where I find ways to turn off the war/conquest part of the game. I build my empire and the AI builds its empire and we both stay clear of each other. This worked great in Humankind and the game remained interesting to me right up until I finally entered the industrial era. At that point, the game started to drag and become tedious and repetitive, and also somewhat frustrating (esp. the pollution mechanic), and so I decided I had got my money's worth from the game and I quit.

*************************

Now I've begun my first playthrough of Dark Envoy (from the makers of Tower of Time from several years ago). So far so good, but clearly only because I'm playing on the Easy difficulty setting (there is a Story setting below this). It is very clearly an ARPG rather than a cRPG, and often-times even more a dungeon-crawler. It's lots and lots of combat encounters one after another, but at least on Easy I am able to get through them pretty quickly and without taking too much damage. I am even able to use their AI to control some of my party members while I only manage my casters. Works pretty well. The story has been very interesting so far, and I continue to like its steampunk setting with its mix of high-magic and advanced technology.

6 hours ago, marelooke said:

SOMA is fantastic, enjoy!

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@marelooke and @majestic

This is so serendipitous, we were just talking about SOMA and I went to Steam today to check it again and its on 80% discount !!!

It was fate telling me to buy it.....and I did 🥳